The Dutch Roquade project. Bas Savenije University Librarian Utrecht University OAI Workshop, Geneva March 2001

Overview Roquade: an infrastructure for academic publishing. The organisation model of Roquade. A European community of practice: Signal Hill.

ROQUADE Infrastructure for electronic publishing. Point of departure: author’s interests. Directed towards all disciplines. Not a publisher, in the traditional sense of the word, but an assistance to scientists, research groups, institutes to become publishers themselves.

Mission and features of Roquade Enhancing scholarly communication in its full diversity Supplying knowledge, tools and people in the publishing area Not profit driven Community of practice

Philosophy behind Roquade Scientific knowledge thrives on the symbiosis of creation & communication. Organising both processes is the rationale of a university. Outsourcing scholarly communication has seriously damaged (‘elseviered’) universities.

Roquade: the project Setting up the infrastructure: the organisation; the production process. The development phase: infrastructure is tested in pilots and adapted if necessary. The result: a viable organisation with a good reputation.

Roquade publishing services technical and organisational infrastructure traditional electronic publishing moderated pre-print service Publication site with peer review

Critical Succes Factors Variety of options; from classical to vanguard Get-at-able infrastructure enabling academics and academic organisations to become publishers Copyright remains with author Decentralised structure Non-profit: fair prices for publication and subscription

Structure of Roquade Steering group (Royal Academy, Universities of Delft and Utrecht) Back office (co-ordinator + pool of specialists in Delft, Utrecht, Amsterdam for maintenance and upgrade of self publishing and administrative tools and know how books) Front offices = franchisees of the Roquade brand (Delft, Utrecht, Amsterdam, new front offices + central contact and help-desk) Satellites (autonomous publishing initiatives and projects) = clients of front offices

Infrastructure client Frontoffices HelpdeskHelpdesk client

Current Roquade satellites Journals –International Journal of Integrated Care –International shipbuilding progress –European Journal of Transport and Infrastructure Research –Kronos - Journal of Cape History –Veterinary Sciences Tomorrow –The Veterinary Quarterly –Ars Disputandi –Studies in Mycology –Ancient Narrative –Neerlandistiek.nl –Cahiers voor Geschiedenis en Informatica Journals in co-publishing –Pedagogiek –Tijdschrift voor Hoger onderwijs Publication sites –Design Research Internet Magazine –Interactive Publication: European Journal of Transport and Infrastructure Research –Syntactic Microvarition Grey Literature –Newsletter Historia & Informatica –Unitwin Series for Namibia

European partnership on academic publishing Network of initiatives on electronic academic publishing for organisations with the following features: –part of (an organisation) within the academic community itself; –concentrating on electronic publishing; –non-profit (fair prices, possibly free of charge); –copyright remains with the authors.

European partnership on academic publishing Objectives: –creating awareness for innovative ways of academic publishing; –sharing experience in new ways of (supporting) academic publishing; –sharing software for the support of electronic publishing; –sharing publications; –presenting linking facilities; –setting up a network for printing on demand.

Authors Group of authors Editorial boards Prof. organisations Acad. institutions Meta-organisations Highwire E-presses Preprint servers Roquade Projects ……. SPARC Signal Hill E-Publishing Facilitators Academic community

Planned activities Website (first half of March 2001). Intranet for participating organisations (April 2001). Active search for new partners. European conference to stimulate the aims of the partnership (February 2002, Utrecht). Investigation of new business models.

When everything is under control, you are going too slowly. Mario Andretti.

For more information: